Army Reserve soldier Manuel Cano was thrilled when his interpreter in Duhok, Kurdistan (in the far northwest of Iraq), told him that the cross he was seeing at a distance was on top of a Catholic church.

The staff sergeant remembers the first day he stepped into the church to attend Mass. He was sitting on a pew in the back when a man came to him and told him he was sitting at the wrong place.

"I was sitting where the women sit," chuckled the 42-year-old Corona resident. "Guys don't hang around with women in church. It is considered disrespectful."

He had to move to the pews in the front --- for men --- which were separated by an empty aisle from the pews in the back. Despite the separation, however, Cano continued to attend Mass every Sunday during his three weeks in Kurdistan, an experience that ultimately led this born-and-raised-but-heretofore-inactive Catholic to renew his faith.

And, once his tour of duty was ended, to continue practicing his faith at home, supported by his wife Regina. Today, Cano looks back on those three weeks as "an adventure of a lifetime."

Faith and family
Cano grew up in the Coachella Valley, in a Catholic environment mixed with World War II stories that his late father Anthony A. Cano --- an Army soldier during WWII - narrated over and over again.

"Growing up, I idolized Dad," he said. "He was my hero."

After his oldest brother suffered a car accident, which made it impossible for him to join the military, Cano --- the second boy among six children --- regarded joining the Army as his responsibility. He joined the military police in 1985 and was sent to the 812th Military Police Company in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Then he moved to the National Guard, where he spent 10 years, joining the Army Reserve a few years later. That led to his first deployment to Iraq from March 2004 to March 2005.

During that time, Cano had remained quite distant to church and more focused on his mission. "I did not want to lose the guys," he said, referring to the Iraqi police he helped train.

Throughout those years Cano's desire to go to church diminished. But after renewing his contract and deployed once again in February 2008, his heart was longing for a stronger relationship with God and with the Catholic Church.

A few months earlier he had married Regina, a high school friend with whom he had reconnected after losing contact. She had always been a devout Catholic who inspired him with her faith. Now in Iraq for a second time, he missed his wife and his father, who had passed away. Understandably, he wanted to remain safe in the war zone.

New experience
Eventually, because his assignment involved training interpreters (and he could do that dressed in civilian clothes), he was stationed in Kurdistan, considered to be the most stable and secure region of Iraq, with the country's lowest poverty rates and highest standard of living. Duhok is one of three western governorates (state or province) in Kurdistan, whose combined population is more than 4 million.

Islam is the dominant religion (90 percent), followed by Christianity, Yezidism, and a small group of Kurdish Jewish. "In Kurdistan it is not a big deal if you are a Muslim or a Catholic," he noted, "but we were still in Iraq and they are mostly Muslims."

Before coming to Kurdistan, Cano had attended services at Camp Fallujah, where he was stationed. But it was never the same, he says, "as going to a real church."

So he found great comfort that early January day in Duhok when he spotted the cross in the distance. And he was excited, he says, that first Sunday he attended Mass for the first time in a mostly Muslim world. And he kept coming back for the three weeks he was in Kurdistan.

Except for the separation of men and women, and an extended time for worshiping at the beginning, which made the Mass last about two hours, "it seemed like I was at a Mass in the Western world," he said. "The long hours did not matter."

Nor did the relative isolation of being among a faith minority in a region with an overwhelming majority of Islam practitioners, some of whom have been, historically, less than welcoming to Christians. "I just remembered how Christ was persecuted," Cano said.

He won't trade those three weeks for anything, he said. He feels lucky to have received the Eucharist every Sunday during his stay in Kurdistan.

Now back in Southern California, Cano is preparing to return to his civilian job with a security company, but his experience with the Kurdish people will always remain in his heart. He has stayed in contact with some of the interpreters with whom he worked and to whom, in appreciation, he and his wife have donated some laptop computers.

"It is always good to give back," Cano said.